Sierra Nevada Builds Up To Lifting-Body Drop TestsJust over 50 years ago a high-powered Pontiac convertible charged across Rogers Dry Lakebed at Edwards
AFB, Calif., towing a primitive lifting body. This month, Sierra Nevada Corp's (
SNC) Dream Chaser, a descendent of the pioneering
M2-
F1, will repeat almost identical tests at
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center as part of a program aimed at an orbital demonstration before 2017.
While the Pontiac and plywood-and-steel-built
M2-
F1 of 1963 have given way to a Ford truck and the advanced composite structure of the Dream Chaser, the aim of proving the viability of a lifting body for space transport is unchanged. Sierra Nevada's test comes as part of
NASA's competitive Commercial Crew Program (
CCP) to develop U.S. human space launch capability to low Earth orbit. It is widely viewed as providing the best chance yet for the first practical application of a design that can reenter the atmosphere and land on a runway using lift generated by the shape of the airframe rather than wings—the mode used by the space shuttle and Boeing's X-37.
Lifting-body development reached a dead end in the 1970s when the larger-scale requirements of
NASA and the U.S. Air Force drove the designers of the space shuttle toward a winged reusable spacecraft. With the priority of the
CCP focused on crew and smaller payloads,
SNC revived
NASA's
HL-20 lifting-body design to develop the Dream Chaser, which is capable of carrying seven astronauts to orbit. The vehicle is designed to launch from Cape Canaveral atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 402.
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